At the tail end of my whirlwind tour through Australia, I made a stop at the SA Writers Centre in Adelaide and conducted a workshop on Asian forms, ranging from the more familiar haiku, tanka, rengu/renga, pantun, to the rediscovered forms liwuli and empat perkataan that Singaporean writers have appropriated and run away with in the past few years.

The workshop went down well, and attracted (to my initial trepidation) local Australian writers Mike Hopkins and Rob Walker, who both had very kind things to say. Both of them took to the liwuli like naturals, and their mod-liwuli offerings can be found here and here.

Somewhere along the line I also managed to get heard by David Martin Jones, who decided to borrow a couple of my lines to make a political point in what is ostensibly a review of the LKY musical (?!?)

"The young satirist Joshua Ip admits that in Singapore ‘I hold my own tongue /I eat my own words/ I shut my own trap’. To prove Ip’s point, in March, the party state imprisoned a sixteen year old blogger, Amos Yee, for obscenity."

Singapore Writers Festival is coming up in late Oct/early Nov, and its moving to The Arts House!Here are the thingies i'm involved in this year:Sat 31 Oct 4-5pm (Gallery) - LAUNCH OF "DEEDS OF LIGHTSABERS" (by Tse Hao Guang) AND "FOR THE EMPIRE COMES REACHING"(by David Wong). - I'll be moderating the double launch of these two debut poetry collections from a galaxy far, far away called Ten Year Series - the first two poets of the six to survive this year's grueling Manuscript Bootcamp.Sun 1 Nov 10-11am (Play Den) - THINGS NOT TO ASK A WRITER with Adeline Foo and Shamini Flint, moderated by Corrie Tan (Festival Pass) - - I don't actually know what I'm going to say for this one but I'll make up something funny. (I can't imagine how the Q&A is going to work for this one.)Thu 4 Nov 830-930pm (Gallery) - LAUNCH OF POETRY.SG AND SINGPOWRIMO 15: THE ANTHOLOGY, with Hao Guang, David Wong, Jennifer Champion, Amanda Chong, and many other readers.- One is a website featuring videos, poems, bios, and critical introductions for 50 of Singapore's finest poets, that aims to be the first place you look for sg poetry on the web. One is an anthology bringing together the most exciting young voices from this year's Singapore Poetry Writing Month, that should be the first place you look for young sg writing!Sat 7 Nov 7-830pm (Gallery) - SINGAPURA CAMPUR: ODE TO MY FAVOURITE PLACE with Jerrold Yam, Audrey Chin, Divya Victor, Yeo Wei Wei, Kelvin Tan, Wong Su Ann and Marc Nair, moderated by Khoo Sim Eng (Free Event)- Lots of cool writers read lots and lots of singlit! I will read a SG50 poem. and other stuff.Sun 8 Nov 4-5pm (TBC) - LAUNCH OF THE EPIGRAM BOOKS COLLECTION OF BEST NEW SINGAPOREAN SHORT STORIES VOL 2 / LONTAR #4 AND #5, with Victor Fernando R Ocampo, Stephanie Ye,Jeremy Tiang, Gemma Pereira and Cheryl Julia Lee moderated by Jason Erik Lundberg. - Launch of the collection which, aside from being best best best, should get a prize for greatest number of modifying adjectives before a noun (in this case, "stories"). Happy to be in it!Sun 8 Nov 7-830pm (Chamber) - CLOSING DEBATE - THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT SINGAPOREANS ARE NOT DREAMERS with Adrian Tan, Gwee Li Sui, Oniatta Effendi, Shamini Flint, Vernetta Lopez, Hirzi Zulkiflie and Deborah Emmanuel, moderated by Petrina Kow (Free Event)- Loud people shouting at one another! I just want to fulfil a childhood fantasy by going up to lky's chair and singing "Imagine".

i'm coming back from australia, which was productive, and i have 30 old/new sonnets that i need to get out of my system. i was aiming for 22, so i could release a revised sonnets from the singlish with 50% upsize (44 +22 = 66) ! now it looks like it might be 75% upsize (44+ 33 = 77), or possibly even 100% upsize... 88 sounds like a good number, really...